From Tom Tomorrow -- All the Rage:

Open thread below...

Clearly, passing this health-care bill is just the beginning, because it doesn't really contain strong regulatory powers. It was pulled under reconciliation rules, and Obama reportedly will try to introduce it later:

WASHINGTON -- A Democratic plan for new federal power over health insurance rates was dropped Thursday from the final health care bill, squeezed out by the way the Democrats are pushing the bill through Congress.

Rolled out with fanfare just weeks ago, the Democratic plan was a response to double-digit rate increases proposed by health insurance companies in California and elsewhere.

It was first proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., then picked up by President Barack Obama.

It would have given the federal government the power to reject proposed rate increases. It also would have allowed the secretary of health and human services to order insurance companies to give back part of premiums if the government decided that the companies spent too much of their incomes on salaries or advertising.

Can someone explain to me why Rep. Stupak and Sen. Nelson's attacks on a woman's legal reproductive rights are not being called into question over nothing more than their push to inject conservative ideology into the health-care bill? And why are the media not highlighting this at all?

It's a complete and utter media bias against women. Liberals are being portrayed by the media elites as being against the Senate health-care bill on the grounds of ideology because of the exclusion of the public option, but any serious person knows our beef is with the actual legislation of the bill and how it will help Americans. The public option is a tool that could create real competition against the health care insurance industry, and is its own cost-control mechanism. We also loved the Medicare buy-in at fifty five, but that fig leaf which was yanked out from under us -- a fact missing from the Sunday talk shows.

What function does the Stupak amendment or Nelson's anti-abortion compromise actually serve in the implementing of health-care reform for America, except to target the health-care concerns of women across America?

Barbara Boxer's compromise gives states the right to opt out of actually having health-care providers cover abortions and all medical issues that arise for women who deal with this issue. That's a huge step backwards for women in America.

Does allowing all those "pro-life" state legislatures like South Dakota's to completely opt-out of any requirement to offer coverage for abortion sound like an improvement to you? Do we all relish the inevitable, bloody state-by-state abortion battles?

On Meet The Press, David Gregory didn't even bother to have one female on the panel to discuss what is happening to their rights, as Taylor Marsh observed:

Well, as with the late Tim Russert, once again with David Gregory on “Meet the Press,” women are not seen or heard at a time when abortion politics has been at the center of the healthcare debate. (I’ve been covering this reality for years.) That women also pay more for health insurance evidently doesn’t meet the “Meet the Press” standards for being included in the debate. That says it all, not only about the continuing If It’s Sunday, It’s Misogyny...

Yeah, why would the opinion of a woman be needed when talking about abortion rights anyway?

The new CBO scores are out on the health-care bill, with good news for Democrats. The overall cost of health-care reform is estimated at $940 billion, but when compared to savings, the net deficit reduction in the first ten years is $130 billion, with an estimated $1.2 trillion saved in the second ten.

More significantly, CBO estimates that Medicare spending will drop by 1.4% per year, an estimated 32 million people will be covered, and would extend Medicare's solvency by an additional 10 years.

Based on the specifics in the report (PDF), it appears that the "Cadillac Tax" is effective in 2018, but it's not clear what limits will be used to determine the premium threshold, Louisiana Medicaid funding remains intact, but the Nebraska subsidies have been removed.

Republicans are in a bit of a bind now. Democrats can rightly characterize this legislation as a landmark "deficit reduction act" which also happens to extend health insurance coverage to 32 million people. That leaves Republicans having to argue against extending coverage to 32 million uninsured while strongly regulating private insurers, and saving money at the same time.

For the moment, it appears they are in a deep state of denial. Meanwhile, the SEIU has endorsed the bill, and an AFL-CIO endorsement is pending.

Either way, it's a win for Democrats, and it looks like they'll head toward a Sunday vote.

Deficits only seem to matter to anyone only when George Bush isn't president.

Ben Bernanke

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Wednesday that Americans may have to accept higher taxes or changes in cherished entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security if the nation is to avoid staggering budget deficits that threaten to choke off economic growth.

"These choices are difficult, and it always seems easier to put them off -- until the day they cannot be put off anymore," Bernanke said in a speech. "But unless we as a nation demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth."

His stern lecture came as the economy is emerging from the worst recession in years, sending the stock market up considerably over the past year and raising public hopes for a return to prosperity. But the economic downturn -- with tumbling tax revenue, aggressive stimulus spending and rising safety-net payments such as unemployment insurance -- has driven already large budget deficits to their highest level relative to the economy since the end of World War II. This has fueled public concern over how long the United States can sustain its fiscal policies.

The health-care bill signed by President Obama last month has further stoked the national debate over government entitlement programs, though the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the legislation would actually reduce future deficits.

As Ezra writes, people seem to want the deficit reduced, but don't want to actually cut anything. It's not old news, but it makes for good TV and GOP talking points.

Kevin Drum adds:

Ah, the American public. God love 'em. The Economist asked if they'd rather tackle the federal deficit by cutting spending or raising taxes, and the runaway winner was cutting spending, by a margin of 62% to 5%. So what are we willing to cut? Answer: pretty much nothing.

As you can see, there wasn't one single area that even a third of the country wanted to cut back on. Except — hold on there! Down in the middle of the table. There is one area that everyone's willing to trim: foreign aid. Good 'ol foreign aid. A category that, as Roger McShane dryly points out, "makes up less than 1% of America's total spending."

Why do the Villagers ignore Dick Cheney saying that Reagan proved deficits don't matter?

[Treasury Secretary Paul] O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.

O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

The Great Torturer's words on deficit spending doesn't seem to resonate with the media, but when he talks about his love of torture, the Beltway's ears perk up.

If the Tea Party activists and Jim DeMint freaks really want to cut the deficit, then how about cutting defense spending? It's insane the amount of money that is getting shoved down the military pipeline. In 2011, we'll be spending $739 billion.

The money we spend on the two wars would practically pay for health care alone.

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Thanks, Sen. Stabenow, it's nice to know someone has a clue. But what about the Speaker of the House? I know Nancy Pelosi can change minds, because we saw the work she did on the health care bill. And I even understand the struggle she has with lily-livered House members who are much more interested in winning than helping the unemployed.

But I have to ask, once again: If the Democrats don't stand for helping the victims of this economic depression, if they don't stand for protecting the people who need it most, what, exactly, do they stand for?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Congress will not take up any measure to give the long-term jobless more weeks of unemployment benefits beyond the 99 weeks available in some states.

Congress is currently locked in an epic battle just to preserve the 99 weeks for the rest of the year. In a seemingly futile effort to appease deficit hawks, Dem leadership already weakened its "extenders bill," formally known as the American Jobs and Closing Loopholes Act, by shortening the unemployment extension through November instead of December.

Hundreds of thousands of people, however, have already exhausted 99 weeks of benefits with no jobs in sight. Thousands signed a petition to demand Congress add a "Tier V" to the four tiers of benefits that currently make up the 99 weeks.

A reporter asked Pelosi at her weekly press conference if there were any plans to help the 99ers.

"No. This bill will go until the end of November, at that time we'll take up something, but not between now and then," said Pelosi (D-Calif.). "The situation I see is that members who are from low unemployment areas are very concerned about the deficit. Members who are from high unemployment areas are very concerned about jobs. So we have to come to a compromise as to how to move forward, and we did with this bill going to November."

But come November, if Congress takes up anything related to unemployment, it will most likely be another temporary extension of existing benefits. The extension under consideration this week is the fourth in the last six months. And while a handful of senators have pledged to constituents that they will fight for more weeks of benefits, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has said that "99 weeks is sufficient."

Well, yes, Max. I'm sure for you, it is sufficient. Of course, you probably don't even know that people like me who were collecting the maximum benefit ran out at 72 weeks, nor do you care. But don't expect us to care about you, either. Buh bye, DSCC! Buh bye, mid-term elections!

Here's more evidence of the Democratic party's concern for the unemployed:

WASHINGTON – Laid off workers would lose subsidies to help buy health insurance and states would be denied billions in federal aid under a plan by House leaders Thursday to trim a bill extending jobless benefits.

Democrats struggled to extend jobless benefits for people who have been out of work for long stretches as lawmakers worried about the growing budget deficit balked at the price tag of the package.

The cuts would reduce the package by about $31 billion, to about $112 billion. Business tax increases would pay for some of the bill, which would still add more than $50 billion to the deficit.

[...] When the subsidy was first enacted, Congress estimated it would benefit 7 million laid-off workers and dependents. It would have cost $6.8 billion to extend it through November.

Democratic leaders have also proposed eliminating $24 billion in aid to cash-strapped states to help cover Medicaid expenses, Cuellar said. Congress increased the federal government's share of the federal-state insurance program for the poor last year.

Oops! There goes that touching concern about healthcare coverage for those hit hardest in these hard times. No Medicaid money? Oh well, those people should just die and decrease the surplus population.

What will it take to make the Democratic leadership understand that their half-assed attempts to win the mid-term elections are the very same tactics that will convince so many voters to stay home on Election Day?

We have a seemingly endless supply of money for war. Why are we so very thrifty when it comes to this economic disaster?

It's people like this who I most fear, because they are completely irrational, own guns, and embrace violence. It's also why I loathe Michele Bachmann and her ilk. They actually encourage this type of behavior.

Watch this exchange. This man starts out angry, but controlled. He's got a problem with our new "socialist-communist" health care bill, and he'll tell anyone within 50 feet about it. When pressed on specifics, he just rolls out of control, first shouting for death to the communists, then death to the videographer.

"Get out of here before I run you up with this flag and throw you to the river," he cries. "I fought for this country, you sonofabitch. What did you do?"

With all due respect for his service to our country, he seems to have a disconnect when it comes to Constitutional rights. Evidently free speech, which he is exercising liberally in this clip, is only acceptable when it's right wing free speech.

Part of me really dislikes giving any attention to these people. At the same time, ignoring them also ignores the fact that when mentally unstable people are stirred up and their anger ignited, it will not end well.

Remember Bizarro World, in Superman comics? Everything they did was the opposite of Earth. Now Mitch McConnell is the leader of Bizarros. In a related thought, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Now the Republicans are doing the same thing they did with health care. I wonder if it'll work this time?

WASHINGTON — With the Senate scheduled to begin debate on a financial overhaul bill this week, the fraud lawsuit against the Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs has emboldened Democrats to ratchet up pressure on Republicans who oppose the Obama administration’s proposal.

In a sign of the Democrats’ increasing confidence that they have the better of the argument in an election year defined by voter anger at big banks and bailouts, White House officials said Sunday that President Obama would take his campaign for a regulatory overhaul on the road in coming weeks.

That campaign will resemble his push that helped the health care bill past its final legislative hurdles.

Mr. Obama in effect has made the measure’s fate a highly personal showdown with the Senate Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Over the last 15 months, Mr. McConnell has sought to defeat each of the Democratic president’s domestic priorities in turn.

In a televised appearance on Sunday, Mr. McConnell asserted that Mr. Obama was “trying to politicize this issue,” and stoutly defended his argument in recent days that the Democratic bill would institutionalize taxpayer bailouts of big banks. On Saturday, Mr. Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address to slam Mr. McConnell’s claim as “cynical and deceptive” because “he knows that it would do just the opposite.”

Grover Norquist hates taxes, but what he hates even more is having 95% of the country getting tax cuts on a day where he wants to excoriate Democrats for...taxing. In his appearance on ABC News' new political show "Top Line", he couldn't really criticize taxes the way he wanted, so he accused the President of lying about his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. He had to really reach for examples, pointing to the tobacco tax increase passed 16 days into the Obama administration.

NORQUIST: What he didn't mention were all the tax increases that he passed. I mean, he completely missed all the tax increases in the health care bill. And he misspoke -- said something that was not true about his original promise.

16 days in, his promise not to tax middle-income people was a lie,” Norquist said. “Then he comes back with the health care bill, and we count at least seven -- others that are tougher count as many as 12 or 14 taxes that are directed at people earning less than $250,000. It’s a lie. So he lied about lying, and that's unfortunate.”

I could go on for pages about how cynical it is for the likes of Grover Norquist to point to a tax on cigarettes and call it a tax increase and broken promise, but let's move on to his claims about the health care bill instead.

Here's his idea of "tax increases" in the health care bill (via a blog post on ATR.org):

• The penalty beginning in 2014 for not having health insurance, a provision originally introduced by conservatives.
• The excise tax on Cadillac plans, which is on insurers, not individuals.
• Various taxes and penalties on HSA accounts which aren't really taxes or penalties on lower-income wage earners who do not benefit from HSA accounts and have been penalized deeply from their expansion.
• An increase in the Medicare tax for single people earning more than $200,000 and married couples earning more than $250,000. I'm not sure how he justifies this as a broken promise, since the promise was always not to raise taxes on the middle class. That increase only applies to earnings in excess of the limit, not all earnings.

The other tax increases aren't increases at all. They're merely an expiration of the George W. Bush Tax Freedom for the Rich Act of 2002, but that doesn't bother Norquist one bit.

It's a fact that 95% of the country paid less in taxes as a percentage of their income. Norquist can't get around that, so he hammers on Democrats for being spenders. Remarkably, ABC's Rick Klein and David Chalian don't bother to clarify Bush's role in jacking up the debt by letting the richest group in this country off the hook for taxes for the past 8 years, for starting 2 expensive wars halfway around the world with no plan to pay for them, or giving away a Medicare drug benefit to seniors without paying for it either.

Yet, for Norquist, the spenders are Democrats. This isn't about taxes, or about spending or about anything closely resembling intellectual honesty. Norquist is the water carrier for the US Chamber of Commerce, the tobacco industry, and the K Street project. He's nothing more than the mouthpiece for these groups, and any others who oppose Democrats.

Yes. Grover Norquist lied about President Obama lying about lying. And that's definitely unfortunate.

John Amato:

Gorver Norquist is one of the major reasons how movement conservatism destroyed our entire political process in America. He was one of the leaders of the College Republicans with jail bird Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. He proved to Big Business that he could make money for them if they invested money into politics which would then be targeted at left wing groups that stood for any type of business regulation. Another mantra he lived by was "defunding the left." He, like Karl Rove lives for a one party system.

And when it comes to Big Business and Republicans, he was at the forefront along with Rick Santorum of the odious K Street project when George Bush took over the presidency.

The chief purpose of these gatherings is to discuss jobs--specifically, the top one or two positions at the biggest and most important industry trade associations and corporate offices centered around Washington's K Street, a canyon of nondescript office buildings a few blocks north of the White House that is to influence-peddling what Wall Street is to finance. In the past, those people were about as likely to be Democrats as Republicans, a practice that ensured K Street firms would have clout no matter which party was in power. But beginning with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and accelerating in 2001, when George W. Bush became president, the GOP has made a determined effort to undermine the bipartisan complexion of K Street.

If today's GOP leaders put as much energy into shaping K Street as their predecessors did into selecting judges and executive-branch nominees, it's because lobbying jobs have become the foundation of a powerful new force in Washington politics: a Republican political machine. Like the urban Democratic machines of yore, this one is built upon patronage, contracts, and one-party rule. But unlike legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, who rewarded party functionaries with jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, the GOP is building its machine outside government, among Washington's thousands of trade associations and corporate offices, their tens of thousands of employees, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in political money at their disposal...read on

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OK, so now Bill O'Reilly is just acting bizarre.

Remember how, on Tuesday, O'Reilly invited on Sen. Tom Coburn to demand he explain his recent criticism of Fox's health-care coverage (particularly the claim that failure to obtain health insurance will now result in jail time), and then proceeded to lie blatantly about what had been said on Fox News in that regard:

O'Reilly: OK, but can you tell me one person on Fox News, just one, who has told this audience that they'll go to jail if they don't buy health insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, why then was it legitimate to bring in Fox News in the discussion, when, No. 1, you don't know anybody on Fox News -- because there hasn't been anyone -- that said people will go to jail if they don't buy mandatory insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, tell me, what -- because it doesn't happen here. And we researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it.

Note the language: O'Reilly is clearly insisting that NO ONE at Fox had EVER said any such thing. Not "had said it after the health-care bill had passed." Just EVER.

Because on his show last night, rather than admitting the error and moving along, O'Reilly instead doubled down and insisted that he was still right and Coburn was wrong -- even though we (and many others, most notably Media Matters and MSNBC's Countdown) were able to show plenty of video of plenty of Fox talkers in fact saying "you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance," perhaps most notoriously Glenn Beck on O'Reilly's own show.

Here's what O'Reilly claimed in his opening Talking Points Memo segment:

O'Reilly: Once again -- once again! -- NBC News has highlighted dishonest propaganda from the far-left Media Matters outfit. Sadly, Time Magazine also participated in the sham.

... Now Senator Coburn admitted he may have made a mistake, but to be fair, the mistake is understandable. Because last fall, when jail time was on the table, Fox News reported it, as we should have! Listen to these sound bites:

[Video clip: ABC News interview with President Obama, Nov. 9, 2009]

Jake Tapper: Do you think it's appropriate to have the threat of jail time for those who refuse to buy insurance?

Obama: You know, what I think is appropriate is that, in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance, and if you don't you're subject to some penalty.

[Video clip: Nancy Pelosi press conference, Nov. 9, 2009]

Reporter: I'm just trying to understand -- if you don't buy health insurance, you go to jail?

Pelosi: Well, there is -- I think the legislation is very fair in this respect.

All right, as we all know, the prison option was taken off the when the final Obama-care bill was being debated. And that's what we were talking to Senator Coburn about! The final bill debate! Not all that stuff! So what I said was absolutely true and nobody at Fox News reported inaccurately about the Obama-care prison situation. Nobody!

Sure, Bill. And your dog ate your homework, right?

It's a fact: O'Reilly claimed, pure and simple, that "nobody [at Fox] ever said" that you'd go to jail for failing to buy health insurance -- and plenty of people at Fox in fact said just that.

Indeed, O'Reilly compounds his original lie here by lying about whether there was a "prison option" in the Obama-care bill at all in the first place: There WAS NEVER A 'PRISON OPTION.' Watch those clips he runs carefully: Neither Obama nor Pelosi support the concept of jail time, but instead claim that the legislation treats people fairly. The questions asked in the clips themselves were based on a false premise: The penalty for failure to buy insurance in that legislation, just like the final version that passed, is a not imprisonment or arrest, but simply a tax -- and failure to pay taxes is a matter for the civil courts. The claim that "jail time" was on the table was an utterly false smear back then -- just as it was even more provably false after health-care reform passed.

Indeed, O'Reilly is simply fabricating when he tries to claim that "we all know" a "prison option" was "taken off." Does anyone know WTF he's talking about?

But that, believe it or not, is not even the most bizarre thing O'Reilly did in this segment. He followed this up by lecturing sternly -- without even a hint of irony or self-awareness -- on the threat posed to the health of the nation by news media who blatantly and nakedly lie, without remorse.

That's right, projection's not just for theaters:

O'Reilly: The importance of this is that you, the everyday American, are now being lied to on a regular basis by people working for huge corporations -- and nothing's being done about it. A voter-driven republic -- a voter-driven republic -- cannot survive if lies supersede the truth.

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